Commonwealth of Cascadia
The Commonwealth of Cascadia is a republic in the Pacific Northwest and running down the western coast of North America. The Commonwealth was founded by acclaimed Italian explorer Marco Polo who, with a large garrison of like minded people, used a rouse to escape the confines of Fascii Italy in hopes of finding a new home for him and his followers. Though originally intending to land on the nations of either the Song Dynasty or Nippon, Polo'a fleet was blown off-course and ended up landing him and his followers on the formerly unknown coast of the American Continent. There Polo met and learned from the indigenous crab people, who he and his fellow Italians later overthrew, who had created a working and advanced society on the coast. Being taught the fundamentals of their society the late Polo then 'hijacked' the now unoccupied nation renaming it and emplacing a human government. Statistics History The history of the Commonwealth of Cascadia can be summed up in the story of Polo's escape from the Fascii, conquering of the crab people and creation of the current nation: Marco Polo, acclaimed explorer and merchant, is granted the ability to make first contact with the mysterious East. He is particularly told by the Fascii government to find a viable trade route between Italy and the ‘Song Dynasty’. Polo is excited at the prospect of exploring the unknown and quickly charters a few ships along with a large garrison of fellow ‘explorers’. After leaving Italy, and any chance the Fascii could get to him, Polo took down the Fascii flag and raised a plain red flag to represent the opposition to fascist rule. After this the rest of the ships took down their flags to replace them with the red oppositional flag, and the groups intentions became clear. The expedition was a ploy to legally leave the confines of the Fascii regime and their oppressive way of ruling. Once outside of the danger zone, the area where they could be caught by the Fascii navy, the group would still sail to the Song Dynasty or the even more mysterious Nippon to find a new place to grow and prosper as a people with no oppressive regimes. Of course the group had no real knowledge of either of their destination’s governments so the trip was a gamble. After passing the southern tip of the Ost India Kompany, and leaving the mesh of small islands of Posouri and the rest of Oceania, the small fleet of leftists encountered a vicious storm they had not prepared for. The storm knocked them slightly off course causing them to have little to no chance of reaching Song. In desperation the group altered their course northward in order to hopefully reach Nippon. After weeks of sailing it became obvious that the group had missed both destinations and they dealt with the fact that they would eventually reach Europe after traveling through the large and unknown body of water between them. To their astonishment the group spotted land earlier than expected, and not that of Europe. The coast they saw seemed to expand forever in each direction, and slowly in the distance they began to see what could be described as ‘civilization’. Hesitant but desperate the fleet headed to the land and it became apparent that they had in fact found a whole new people, though the people they encountered were far from what they thought they would. Before Marco Polo stood, or rather scuttled, a crab-like creature that stood almost as tall at him with the ability to be upright. They wore clothes and appeared to be almost as civilized as their European counterparts so the group trusted them. The crab people, who had learned to communicate with Polo quite easily due to their advanced educational system, told the dumbfounded explorer all about their society. They were a collectivized people governed by a democratically elected legislation. They were somewhat advanced militarily but their greatest strengths came in their agriculture, chemistry and educational system. Marco Polo and others quickly absorbed the information freely given to them and took detailed notes about how the crab people had developed their society. The crab people fascinated Polo and the others to the point that Polo asked how to duplicate their society. Quite spontaneously the crabs began to teach the explorer their deepest secrets in hopes that he would bring the information of their hospitality back to wherever they came from. After each lesson on crab society Polo wrote small comments such as, “I can’t believe they’re doing this” and “Though they have created a society the crab people appear to be quite naive to the point where they gave a stranger all their secrets”. After several months with the crab people Polo met with the rest of his settlers to discuss what he had learned. The advanced crab educational system taught to Polo made it easy to relay the information given and soon most of those that came along with Polo knew just how to run the crab society. It was not long after that the decision was made to not create a duplicate society to coexist with the crab people, but instead take over the crab society all together. It was not hard for the hundred or so humans to conquer the crab people and topple their government. The crab people could not run backward or forwards allowing for their human adversaries to quickly out manoeuvre them. Along with this the crabs had many weak spots vulnerable to the simplest of weapons such as the arrow or spear. Though the crab people had hordes of soldiers with training in crab military tactics they failed miserably at confronting an enemy so knowledgeable of their military tactics and formations with such speed. It was for these reasons that Marco Polo and his fellow settlers were able to defeat the crab peoples’ army and move onto the crab settlements, killing many and forcing the rest to flee back to their simple water-locked life under the waves. With crab-architecture, crab-agriculture, crab-education, crab-roadways, and even crab-people-meat the now colonists were able to survive with amazing ease and their society began to grow and prosper almost instantly. Marco Polo and others soon came up with a name for the area coming from the Italian word cascata, meaning waterfalls due to the many rapids in the land. Cascade, would serve as the name of the mountain range the group landed near and Cascadia would serve as the name of the land they now owned. Next Polo and others developed a democratic system combining Roman-Era republicanism and crab people socialism to create the Commonwealth of Cascadia. Now stranded though the group would need to develop a society, whilst using crab technologies, to meet their goal of a fascist-free nation. The group soon created a flag inspired by the beauty of their new land. The green representing the grass and plains, the white representing the Cascade mountaintops and snow, the blue representing the blue sky and bodies of water and finally the douglas fir tree representing...the douglas fir tree... The Commonwealth soon grows in population from influx on migrants from around the world and whilst taking the land formerly under crab control over, the Commonwealth of Cascadia takes its place amongst the various nations of the world. Category:Nation Category:Empire Builder 4 Category:Cascadians